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No! as the foaming swathe

Of torn-up water, on the main,

Falls heavily away with long-drawn roar
On either side the black deep-furrowed path
Cut by an onward-laboring vessel's prore,
And never touches the ship-side again;

Even so we leave behind,

As, chartered by some unknown Powers,
We stem across the sea of life by night,
The joys which were not for our use designed,
The friends to whom we had no natural right,
The homes that were not destined to be ours.

EARLY DEATH AND FAME.

OR him who must see many years,

FOR

I praise the life which slips away

Out of the light and mutely; which avoids
Fame, and her less fair followers, envy, strife,

Stupid detraction, jealousy, cabal,
Insincere praises; which descends

The quiet mossy track to age.

But, when immature death
Beckons too early the guest

From the half-tried banquet of life,

Young, in the bloom of his days;
Leaves no leisure to press,
Slow and surely, the sweets
Of a tranquil life in the shade;
Fuller for him be the hours!

Give him emotion, though pain!

Let him live, let him feel: I have lived!

Heap up his moments with life,

Triple his pulses with fame!

YOUTH AND CALM.

'TIS death! and peace, indeed, is here,

And ease from shame, and rest from fear.

There's nothing can dismarble now

The smoothness of that limpid brow.
But is a calm like this, in truth,

The crowning end of life and youth,
And when this boon rewards the dead,
Are all debts paid, has all been said?
And is the heart of youth so light,
Its step so firm, its eye so bright,
Because on its hot brow there blows
A wind of promise and repose
From the far grave, to which it goes;
Because it has the hope to come,
One day, to harbor in the tomb?
Ah

no, the bliss youth dreams is one
For daylight, for the cheerful sun,
For feeling nerves and living breath,
Youth dreams a bliss on this side death!

It dreams a rest, if not more deep,

More grateful than this marble sleep.
It hears a voice within it tell:

Calm's not life's crown, though calm is well.
"T is all perhaps which man acquires,
But 't is not what our youth desires.

W

YOUTH'S AGITATIONS.

HEN I shall be divorced, some ten years hence,

From this poor present self which I am now;
When youth has done its tedious vain expense
Of passions that forever ebb and flow;

Shall I not joy youth's heats are left behind,
And breathe more happy in an even clime?
Ah no! for then I shall begin to find
A thousand virtues in this hated time.
Then I shall wish its agitations back,
And all its thwarting currents of desire;

Then I shall praise the heat which then I lack,
And call this hurrying fever, generous fire,

And sigh that one thing only has been lent

To youth and

in common, age

discontent.

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